Review: Elevation Burger

A few months back, a facebook status update from an old elementary school classmate caught my eye.

“The fries taste like they have been sprinkled with magic unicorn dust.”

Now if that isn’t a review to pay attention to, I don’t know what is.

He was talking about the fries he had just had at Elevation Burger. And after reading that, I made a mental note that we should stop in and check them out.

All in the name of good research, after all.

Last Friday found us with exactly an hour and a half before The Ex came to pick up the kids for the weekend. Which presented us with the perfect opportunity for a super early dinner with a girlfriend and her son. At Elevation Burger, of course.

Located on the busy Bloomfield Avenue in Montclair, you can find on-street parking or a spot at one of the nearby municipal lots. We also found out, after the fact, that the restaurant has a parking lot behind the building as well.

We walked in and had the kids stake out a space at the counter area while we figured out the menu.

Burgers, fries, shakes. Your typical burger joint offerings. Toppings galore, which I do so love.

And a commitment to organic ingredients, sustainability, and being environmentally friendly.

Which makes it all the better.

We ordered a little bit of everything and took our seat while we waited for our food. It came out less than ten minutes after we ordered, which is pretty ideal when you have kids in tow. And as an aside, the restaurant is noisy enough that noisy kids go unnoticed.

Thank you and amen.

I got my burger with a million things on it. Toppings are my favorite. Caramelized onions. Cheddar cheese. Their special Elevation sauce. Lettuce. Tomato. Ketchup.

The buns were super soft and the burger juicy. Not so juicy that it’s dripping through your fingers, but just enough. Just right. Love the fact that they were using Cheddar, as opposed to some also-ran plastic formulation of cheese.

One caveat on the burgers … there is a double-patty size. Or, um, nothing. Like, seriously, go big or go home. So instead, we opted for the kid-size burgers, which are really adult size, and include just one patty. It solved the problem at hand, but we thought it a little odd that there wasn’t a single patty offering for grown-ups with regular sized appetites.

They have healthy sides for the kids, which is very much appreciated. Madeline plowed through her mandarin oranges and her organic milk in nothing flat.

Now the fries … oh those fries. And oh how my old elementary school classmate was right. Amazing. Like totally amazing. Worth it for them alone. Rumor has it that they are cooked in olive oil (instead of the more traditional peanut oil), and that totally made all the difference. Although it’s not listed on the menu, you can also get cheese fries (which featured melted Cheddar on top). Delicious stuff.

Three kids, two adults. We had burgers, fries, shakes, oranges, drinks … I don’t think there was anything leftover. Which says a lot. It actually says it all right there.

If you happen to have an Elevation Burger joint near you (and they have tons of locations all over the country), do check it out. You can also follow them on Twitter and facebook.

Elevation Burger
367 Bloomfield Avenue
Montclair, NJ
(973) 783-8000

Hungry for more burger reviews?

• We love Bobby’s Burger Palace, especially their Napa Valley Burger, and how they crunchify their offerings. (The burger recipe can be found here, when we did our Bobby Flay Burger Cook-Off)
• Although we had some misgivings, smashburger was definitely worth a visit too.
• We hit up the Connecticut Shake Shack and loved it.
• Our first and second visit to Red Robin.

PS All the above photos were taken with an iPhone. You can follow me on Instagram (cateomalley), or right here.